The Truck Farm: The Coolest Urban Agriculture Project Around (VIDEO)

Struck with the urge to build a garden but with no land to grow it on, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis (co-creators of the film King Corn) of Wicked Delicate productions decided to use a 1986 gray Dodge Ram pickup truck to create a portable vegetable and herb garden.

Watch "Fresh, direct", week two of the Truck Farm film below. In this episode, the farmers launch the Truck Farm Community Supported Agriculture program. Cheney and Ellis decide to harness solar energy atop of the old gray dodge to document the Truck Farm's progress with enchanting time-elapsed filming. Each episode is accompanied by delightful musical narration from the Fisherman Three. In this episode, the Truck Farm visits Food Politics author Dr. Marion Nestle who explains the benefits of mobile gardening.

Matt Hickman of Mother Nature Network describes the Truck Farm sensation in his Red Hook, Brooklyn neighborhood.

The ordinary looking truck -- ordinary aside from the bed filled with soil (using green roof technology) and heirloom veggies -- parked on Van Brunt Street had been turning heads in the neighborhood for a while but no one knew quite what to make of it. Two months later, Cheney's mobile garden/CSA-on-wheels/four-wheeled farm is literally all over the place.

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Comments

[ayisha]

08:51 PM on 08/19/2009

i applaud the effort to promote growing your own, but i seriously hope no one is going to drive a flat-bed full of soil around, just as a conversation starter. the increase in fuel wasted by this is downright irresponsible. if you don't have yard space, look into container gardening. i have a friend who composts in a bin on his fire escape and uses the end product on his indoor "garden". be innovative, but be responsible.

[EcoMom]

11:20 AM on 08/03/2009

It is in both the maternal drive to protect and human ingenuity and passion that I place my hope for a sustainable future. Perhaps Dodge could begin to sell all of their big trucks with gardening kits to balance out CO2 emissions and environmental damage from the production of their behemoths ...

[klbrz]

12:16 AM on 08/01/2009

I think some of the commentators here are taking this a little too seriously, and yet, possibly, not seriously enough. What these guys are doing is showing it's not that hard to grow your own food (at least some of it). It reminds me of growing some vegetables in my front yard (sun was best) for a few years and how fascinated the kids in the neighborhood were. They had never seen okra, potato, tomato, corn and other vegetable plants. They didn't know the potatoes grew underground or that the okra blossoms were so beautiful (related to hibiscus).

The last few generations have lost too much of this sort of knowledge. If these fellows can bring a little bit of it back to us, one truckload at a time, more power to them!

[elan4444]

02:41 PM on 07/31/2009

A lot of people in Brooklyn aren't using their yards for anything. Take a clue from the British - if you have a 3'X5' plot, grow veggies! I don't get all the negative comments posted here - sometimes it takes a unique approach to get the public's attention - and they have! Growing your own veg is a great thing to do, and teaching the practice to children is even better. They even connected their efforts to old-timey Brooklyn and got a NYU nutritionist prof. in the piece for authenticity! Great job, guys!

[BannedNBoston]

12:25 PM on 07/31/2009

Power the trucks with hemp diesel.
Canola oil = 133 gallons per acre
hemp diesel = 1,000 gallons per acre
Less fertilizer needed, strongest root structure known, no till framing too.

[burtmckinly]

01:20 PM on 07/31/2009

Hemp diesel and human fat.

Eco-boat powered by human fat attempts round the world speed record:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-503419/Eco-boat-powered-human-fat-attempts-round-world-speed-record.html

[fcsakes]

06:15 AM on 07/31/2009

Simply wonderful!

[LeftLeanWing]

02:16 AM on 07/31/2009

My G-d ..... How much I miss the hippies !

[burtmckinly]

01:41 AM on 07/31/2009

Complex agroforestry is the future of agriculture, not annuals in the back of a truck: www.anthrome.wordpress.com.

[Aron Cohen]

05:55 AM on 07/31/2009

YES!

Science is so much better than feel good "remedies" to our problems.

[fcsakes]

06:21 AM on 07/31/2009

Much of everything growing in that truck is perennial or biennial, not annual. In fact, depending on climate or how it is overwintered, everything growing in that truck can continue or come back.

Besides, no one claimed it as the "future of agriculture." Lighten up.

[burtmckinly]

10:34 AM on 07/31/2009

Hey, I'm just saying... At some point we're going to have to depart from this overly flawed, labor intensive, uni-dimensional,European colonial row-crop agriculture system.

Plus, Driving around all day with your plants in the back of a truck has got to cause huge trauma to plant roots and mycorrhizae. I would never subject plants to such a transient and volatile environment.

[elcerritan]

06:59 PM on 08/02/2009

Actually everything they mentioned was an annual except MAYBE the arugula, depending on the variety, and MAYBE the broccoli, which can sometimes overwinter in mild climates. The only way the other stuff will "come back" is if it sets seeds.

[Schneb]

06:17 PM on 07/30/2009

Have to say it: 'Keep On Truckin'!'

[elcerritan]

05:19 PM on 07/30/2009

More gimmicky environmental coverage from HuffP. There's REAL environmental news to report out there, but instead, we get a steady stream of gadgets and goofiness. This section of the site needs to grow up and stop promoting silliness as "green".

[A. Siegel]

05:12 PM on 07/30/2009

Have to say that I find this absurd, for a number of reasons. A very simple one: for every 100 lbs added to a vehicle, fuel efficiency falls in the range of 1-2%. How many lbs of soil? Sorry, don't think that this merits "coolest" ...

[burtmckinly]

01:42 AM on 07/31/2009

www.anthrome.wordpress.com

[Aron Cohen]

05:53 AM on 07/31/2009

I totally agree.
This is inane.

[BioLiberty]

10:19 AM on 07/31/2009

Not if the truck ran on grease!

[Mnemanth]

04:31 PM on 07/30/2009

Cool! Talk about packing your own lunch!

[alphabet99]

04:24 PM on 07/30/2009

i've been growing some produce on my balcony and it does have an extra zing to it compared to the supermarket equivalent.

[burtmckinly]

01:44 AM on 07/31/2009

As long as you don't have a high-salt diet and you don't consume excessive quantities of alcohol you can fertilize your produce with your own urine and see your growth rates double.